


Fireflies

by disillusionist9



Series: Circadian [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Could Be Canon, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 22:04:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9627374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disillusionist9/pseuds/disillusionist9
Summary: There's something magical in the quiet companionship of the one you love most.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Colubrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/gifts).



He did not know when he started associating moonlight with her hair. Maybe after he heard her name and snorted at the frankly obvious implications it held. Or was it the first time he'd been wandering the corridors trying to calm his mind and ran across her sitting on a courtyard windowsill, bare toes skimming the snow atop a bush below. Could it have been the first time he passed a memory from his temple to hers, a safe vessel to carry detailed plans from one side to the other, saving dozens of lives every time they met? It didn't matter. She was the light to his darkness.

And he wanted all of her for himself.

Luna didn't question Theo when he left her a request to meet on the east banks of the Black Lake after sunset. They'd met to exchange information in odder places, and Theo not only suspected but _knew_ in his bones that either the castle or the meddlesome Headmaster were making it easier for their meetings to happen. For that reason he felt a lining of guilt build in his stomach and rise in his throat, irritating the ulcer Pomfrey had diagnosed two months ago. She'd tutted and implored him to try to be more conscious of his eating habits. One eyebrow lifted, he'd buttoned up his robes and held his tongue before he'd admonished her for not finding the signs of muggle painkillers and cigarette tar inside of him. And really, he couldn't force the house elves to make a meal only for him. The castle was nearly ruined now, after hours of battles between students and Death Eaters and professors all on different sides of the same battle, and it hurt to see his second home in such a state.

She was braiding long willow branches when he found her. Summer was starting to fill the air with the sweet rotting smell of leaves stuck on the banks of the lake, and the ground was warm enough he didn't flinch when he noticed she wasn't wearing shoes today.

"Sneak thieves or on purpose?" he asked, striding up to her calmly, hiding the storm underneath.

"Always on purpose. Hello, Theo."

"Hello, Luna. Willow branches?"

Luna smiled at him and kept the rhythm in her fingers, setting another craft down on top of a pile of others, reaching to grab another set of three to braid, securing one end under a rock. "The world could use with a bit more balance, don't you agree?"

He lifted an eyebrow and heard Snape's voice reciting the potions qualities of willow pieces in his head, and replied, "Balance and harmony, yes."

She hummed in acknowledgement and continued to work. Theo liked her silence as much as her voice since she always seemed to know when he needed one or the other. Today his thoughts were loud enough he couldn't concentrate on much else. He sat on a fallen tree trunk not far from her perch and looked up at the castle in the setting sun. Tall spires reached towards the sky in a stretch to victory - victory at the cost of so many lives, and he tried not to think of those who may have died because of information he passed along.

"Words get trapped if you don't speak them," Luna said, interrupting his maudlin thoughts. "Like fish trapped in a bowl that's too small."

Theo blinked to adjust his eyes in the dying light, small fires popping up in the darkness to light the few paths that remained after the battle carnage. "Do you have any regrets, Luna?"

For the first time since joining her, Theo watched her hands pause then stop their work. He kept watching those hands instead of looking up into eyes that saw and knew too much. Luna crawled the few feet between them and moved to nestle under the arm closest to her.

"No," she said, after a time. "The means are worth the ends."

Theo wrapped an arm around her, the rough wool of her jumper itchy against the fresh scars on his arm. Feeling bolder now that there wasn't a war between them, he reached up and rubbed his knuckles against her throat with soothing up and down pressure. A firefly that was lazily circling the tall grass nearby made a zigzag pattern in the air on its way towards Luna's hair, bright enough to trick the bug to come closer. Luna didn't flinch when it landed, or when another followed it.

"You're bleeding," Luna said, drawing the hand not tracing runes of protection and love on her neck into both of her own to rest on her knees. There were still a few fresh lines on that arm he hadn't bothered to heal yet and a burn from a stray hex. Drawing her wand from the sleeve of her jumper, she cast several healing spells on him, some he recognized and others he did not.

"Thank you," he said.

Her hands lingered on the healed skin, tracing his scars, too old to be completely erased, webbing over the muscles and bones. The fireflies still wandered amongst her curls illuminating a flower here or a leaf there artfully woven into braids. Soft light from their thoraxes made her glow, a candle in the approaching night.

Theo drew Luna into his lap, cataloguing where she'd changed since he'd last held her like this over a year ago, before she was captured and locked in the Malfoy's dungeon and before he'd had a chance to tell her how he felt. Words weren't enough anymore. All they exchanged were words, memories full of them, to help the side that miraculously won with magic he didn't think he wanted to ever understand. His hand found a hollow above her hip that was deeper than he remembered, but he just drew her as close to him as possible, not caring that the fireflies were making their way from her hair towards his.

What was done, was done. The night stretched before them, blanketing the ground of Hogwarts in a peaceful stillness, and he was content to greedily absorb all the light she was giving him.


End file.
